


Apostasy for Two

by aesthete_laureate



Series: Personal Apocrypha [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: "Lovers", (shock horror I know), Anal Sex, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Second Person, Pre-portal incident 1, Science shenanigans, They both love each other but one can't say it and the other one can't hear it, Two cases of One-Sided attraction more like, WOO, a lot of coffee, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:14:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28889670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesthete_laureate/pseuds/aesthete_laureate
Summary: At least he has the good grace to look sheepish about it, this time. He glances up at you with a tiny, hopeful smile that-- damn it to all the hosts of heaven, that smile makes your accusing scowl melt away and your shoulders lower, and you roll your eyes but you both know this’ll be the end of the matter.
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Ford Pines
Series: Personal Apocrypha [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118705
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> He really said ‘honey im not doing it sorry, sorry everybody x’.  
> Also his dialogue … Like writing Jake English as a chemist.
> 
> Anyway they actually go at it in this one congratulations :)

\--

“I feel like you’re just making words up, now.”

He looks at you with that bemused expression and you keep patting frantically at the cuff of your coat, until you’re positive the status of your person is no longer set to on fire. Singed, definitely, but the coat isn’t completely lost. It’ll hold up for a few more of these outings, probably.

“”What in Sam Hill’s summerlovin’ wazoo'' is a completely normal thing to say when you’re reactin’ to your clothes catchin’ fire out of absolutely consternatin’ nowhere.” 

You’re still out of breath, and you accidentally tug too hard on your hair as you try to run sweaty, shaking fingers through it. “I’ll need more than a drop of the pure in my tea tonight, Pines, I’ll need a heavy-handed splash or two after all’a this.”

He’s just standing there, the little toadlike creature responsible for your sudden uptick in body temperature sitting placidly in an empty jam jar which he holds with both hands.

At least he has the good grace to look sheepish about it, this time. His eyes shift to the side like a child being scolded, then to the amphibious thing, and then he glances up at you with a tiny, hopeful smile that-- damn it to all the hosts of heaven, that smile makes your accusing scowl melt away and your shoulders lower, and you roll your eyes but you both know this’ll be the end of the matter.

“I’m sorry.” He says, and you believe him. “I didn’t know it could do that. I wonder if it’s an internal mechanism like a physiological flintstone and spark, or if there’s some sort of fuel flow in its respiratory tract..?”

He doesn’t expect you to answer, he’s just musing aloud to himself and will likely figure it out with a little poking and prodding at this new addition to what may as well be billed as his personal petting zoo.

He does it a lot, it’s how he processes things. His mumbling is like the sound of rain on a window pane at night as you both walk back to the cabin, it’s a simple comfort and at the same time blessedly easy to tune out. That comes with practice, and you staunchly ignore the flash of (petty, possessive) pride that you feel at the notion, that you’re the single other person to ever have been this close to him. Close enough to know him, be used to his habits. And to have really, actually known him in the other sense of the word like when--

Stop, rewind the tape. 

You don’t think about that night on purpose, but the memory sure does like to come off the backburner of your mind at the most inopportune times. Like when you’re in the shower and can’t ignore it, or chatting to him over breakfast and he’s right there, or when you’re tucked up too-warm in the bedroom and trying to go to sleep. 

Or, for example, when you’re holding the front door open for him and he gives you a pleased little nod, pausing in his rambling to smile at you again. It’s nothing but a slight lift of one corner of his mouth, just a silent little ‘thanks’, but it makes you think of the words he had said when he had you pinned under him, and your body goes hot against your best wishes. Luckily, you can blame your flushed cheeks on the cold weather.

A lot had happened in the last week. You’d found a dog (Chrissy), almost immediately lost the dog to a werebear attack (Chrissy!), gone into town for another few months’ worth of groceries, and pointedly not spoken about what had happened between the two of you.

(You remember, though. Don’t think you’ll ever be able to forget. 

..okay, well, maybe you hadn’t been paying attention to the specific words very well, but a few do stand out in your memory. He hadn’t quite been kind, calling you things like desperate and filthy, but he’d come around to sweeter things eventually. Even ‘pretty’, close to the end. There’s a part of you that doesn’t strictly enjoy being called pretty, it’s more of a woman’s word, but, it had felt nice in the moment.)

Tonight is shaping up to be much the same, and you’re not sure how you feel about that. Maybe it would be best to leave the past in the past, let bygones be bygones, and just think to yourself about it at night under the safety of darkness and his comforter. The thing with that, which you’ve really been trying, is that the blanket smells like him, and the shower smells like him, and the coffee always brewing in the kitchen isn’t a very different story. He drinks the stuff religiously, sometimes ten or more cups in a day. You’d almost think he didn’t have to sleep at all.

He’s currently on his twelfth. Or, twelfth since you’d gotten up that morning at least. It doesn’t seem to affect him, his hands are steady as he jots down observations on the newfound fire-starting creature in his journal. He’s got a steady touch all the time, your mind supplies unhelpfully, and his calloused fingers are dexterous in a way you almost would never expect. His hands are larger than yours, and broader than most for the extra finger. You’ve got slim, almost dainty ones, more suited to fiddling with the minutiae of circuit boards and wiring than, say, critter wrangling. Musician’s hands, your mother had always said.

He taps against the table, a quick one-two-three-four-five, and you become aware that you’re staring at his hands too intently. When you glance up at his face to see if he’d noticed, he’s straightened up from writing and is looking at you right back, expectant. You feel like you must have missed something.

“Pardon?”

“I said, you don’t feel any lingering side effects, do you?”

Oops. “I.. don’t think, no. Just gave me a decent fright.” You shrug, nonchalant. It wasn’t the first time Stanford Pines had inadvertently put you in harm’s way for the sake of science and it probably wasn’t going to be the last. He had a way of finding thrill, excitement. You didn’t come here to be bored.

“So I’ll just jot down ‘harmless’, then.” He plays it straight for one second, two, and then he cracks a cheeky little grin, the tip of his pen hovering over the page. “Or maybe ‘fire hazard, do not provoke’.”

“Write down ‘fire hazard, do not be in the vicinity of someone whose actions could be categorized as provocative’.” You put on your Academic Voice, natural drawl slipping away in favor of sharpened t’s and clearly enunciated last syllables.

He rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling. “I’m not that provocative.”

You both realize what he had said in the same instant. 

He clears his throat, hunching back down over the journal again and you avert your gaze to look out the kitchen window. It’s snowing now, you note absently, and it’s pretty swirls of snowflakes instead of the sleet that falls from January onward. (You should have gotten Christmas decorations out at the shop, but then again it wouldn’t be fair to do that since he never gets anything to put up for holidays. It’s not a big deal.)

The tense silence lasts for a while, and your tea has grown cold in your hands but you don’t want to draw attention to yourself by getting up to put the kettle on again. Actually, maybe that’s not a bad idea. It’ll give you a potential out, and a way to smooth things over. Yeah. You scoot your chair back, leaning forward to reach for his empty coffee cup, and as you open your mouth to ask how he’ll take it this time he speaks up too.

“I didn’t mean--”

“You want another--”

“Oh, I, yeah.” He stutters, and looks surprised, like he expected a fight instead of a refill offer. He looks like he’s poised to spring up out of his seat, and his hand is on the cover of the journal in a perfect mirror of the symbol on it. You don’t know how he’d expect something like that to go down between you and him, he could definitely ring your bell without even giving maximum effort. Luckily, neither of you are the fighting type. He sinks back down, but he’s clearly still uncomfortable, twirling his pen between his fingers. “Thank you. I just. Never mind.”

“My pleasure.” As soon as the response is out of your mouth you want to smack yourself, you were supposed to defuse the situation, not continue speaking in cryptic euphemisms! You follow up quickly, face heating like it has been almost constantly for a week. “I mean, sure, no bother, will you let me put milk in your coffee this time?”

“Nuh-uh.” He shakes his head, humming in the negative, and for that moment the two of you are back to normal.

“I was plannin’ on breakin’ out the whiskey like I said earlier, you want some of that? Think of this one like a nightcap?” You try to coax him, leaning to the side to get a read on the stove clock. “It’s already a quarter ‘til eleven. I figure we go to sleep and pick up back downstairs tomorrow.”

It looks like he’s not going to bite, though, he’s got that stubborn look about him. “No, thank you.” He sighs, and the end of his pen starts tapping against the tabletop erratically. “I think I’ll head down in a minute, and then probably meditate for a while.”

You stare at him, deadpan. You don’t approve of when he avoids sleep on purpose, and he knows that, and you know he knows. But he doesn’t meet your eye and after a few seconds you concede, letting out a little breath and moving toward the stove to light the range again.

Eventually the kettle whistles, and you put down the article on whatever it was - Supernumerary Digits and Why They Tend Distal - that you’d grabbed up off the kitchen counter to pretend to read in favor of pouring your new drinks. You grab the near-empty bottle of whiskey from atop the fridge and add a decent splash of it to your tea. You think you’ve earned it. When you settle back into your seat opposite him and place his cup back in front of him, he hardly looks up at you before gathering his research in his arms and pushing back in his seat to stand.

“Well, good night, then.” You say, slowly, watching as your tea very nearly spills over the side of your cup when you swirl it in your hand. “I’ll hazard a guess it wouldn’t be wise for me to come down to the lab, on the off chance I interrupt your meditation,” and your eyes lift to gauge how he’ll react to that, to the implication that something happened last time you did.

He looks a bit hot under the collar, but. You’re annoyed at just how realistic of a probability it is that the flush on his face might purely be due to him looking forward to working on the project, not as a reaction to you.

He still can’t look at you, though, and his voice sounds dismissive and flustered in equal measure as he waves one hand in your direction. “No. Probably not.” Still, he hovers in the space between the table and the doorway, fidgeting with one of the couple of pages threatening to fall out of his journal altogether.

Hell. He isn’t going to bring it back up. 

You’re just going to keep dancing around it like this forever, until he does it again, or you get fed up and leave, or, you don’t know, the portal gets finished and you part ways for good. 

That-- you can’t let that happen. You’re going to have to make the move, here.

So you do. You stand up, both hands balled into fists on the tabletop, and level a glare at him that, judging from his expression, probably seems like it came out of nowhere. But he doesn’t move, is still standing there. Watching you.

“Alright, Stanford,” you say, and then your train of thought derails completely. 

You hadn’t quite thought out what it was you were going to say. There’s an awkward pause, and then you manage to, not get the train back on track, but maybe build another track in the direction it’s going now. “I need to talk to you, even though you clearly don’t wanna talk to me. I.. I- what happened that night, do you remember?”

You’re staring down at the wood grain of the table as you force the words out. Your hands clench into tighter fists, and then your fingers splay out across the unpolished surface. “Tell me you remember. I don’t, ah.. I want you to remember.” The anger you’d started with is gone by the end of your little outburst, and admitting that last bit was not strictly part of the plan. 

You hang your head, unable to even try and look at him anymore. He’s still here, though, standing there with his books in his arms as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He’s not getting angry, and he’s not moving to hit you, but he’s not reassuring you either - he’s just silent. Maybe he wants to suffocate you out.

It’s going to work, too, you’re about to make some bland excuse and try to escape upstairs when he turns to place his notepad and papers on the counter next to him. Then, he draws in a breath and clasps his hands behind his back - the position draws his shoulders back, and in your peripheral vision he looks stately, handsome, much more sure of himself than you are, that’s for certain. “..I remember,” is all he says, as if that’s the end of it, as if it’s made it simpler instead of much more complicated.

Questions cloud your mind immediately, how does he feel about that, does he regret it, does he wish it hadn’t happened? (Your fingers itch for a pen, from some reflexive need to take notes.) More dangerously, underneath the panicked thoughts, another burning question lurks: does he want it to happen again?

It’s not until he furrows his brow in surprised thought that you realize you had said that last bit out loud, and before you can try to backpedal, he’s giving you an answer.

“You..” he clears his throat, “I didn’t scare you away with that?”

Your head whips up, and you search his expression with wide eyes. He really means it, he’s glancing to one side and fidgeting with the cuff of his sweater. His glasses do a little bit to disguise his blush, but the red tips of his ears give it away.

So you shake your head, the motion barely noticeable at first before you repeat the gesture more fervently. “No.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> F has some trouble with rationalizing but he's into the whole thing I promise

\--

He lets out a funny little breath, something between a sigh and a short exhaled laugh, and you finally stand up properly in order to move toward him. 

“Do you want it to happen again?” He asks lowly, gaze directed at the wall somewhere vaguely to your right. 

Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t give him a straight answer to that question. It’s just. You can’t. It’s embarrassing, and you’re supposed to say no, and you’re not going to. So, instead, you step right past him, into the hallway, and tilt your head in a nod. It’s a clear beckon for him to follow.

“..c’mon.”

Deliberating on it for a second (just long enough for it to be okay, you’re not eager or anything), you decide to take the risk of holding one hand out toward him, as if going for a handshake.

He takes it.

Threads his fingers between your own.

The bedroom door clicks shut behind him with a kind of finality, and it sends a shock through you as you realize. This is happening. On purpose. 

You’re shaking as he guides you to the bed, and you’re not sure why because you were the one who initiated this, you wanted him to do it, what’s wrong with you? He gives you a smile that you’d call bashful if it weren’t for the sultry heat just below the surface, shrugs out of his coat, and you watch it fall from his broad shoulders as if in a dream. As you lower yourself from sitting upright to propping yourself up on your elbows, he starts to unbutton his shirt. You can’t take your eyes off of him. 

He’s not a small man. (Not like you are, you push the thought away.) He’s fit in a natural sort of way, from running around after oddities all day and handling heavy equipment by night. Handsome. All broad shoulders, strong hands, dark hair and blue eyes and unequivocally masculine, which is a point that your mind sticks on, has a hard time with, but you really, really try to blind yourself to it for now. Your gaze travels downward from his chest to his stomach, and then down further to the crotch of his pants and then you look away, quickly, force of habit. 

He lets out a nervous little laugh, letting his shirt fall from his shoulders in much the same way his coat did, “I hope it’s not that bad.” And then, oh, he reaches down and actually touches you. Touches you with purpose for the first time since the lab. His hands rest on your shoulders, briefly, and then slide down to the buttons of your own shirt. They’re warm through the thin cotton. Nimble and efficient in undoing the buttons, and something about even that slight movement, the minute pressure working down over your abdomen, turns you on, a bolt of lust going straight through your lower stomach.

“No, no, ‘course not. I just-.” What you’re just, you’re not sure. Nervous, definitely, aroused, yes. Able to articulate either of those things, not at the moment. “You look good,” you manage, meekly.

He hums, his face darkening to a deeper shade of pink. He’s touching you like you’re important, and there’s a reverent sort of look on his face - it’s a different look than when he’s dealing with an experiment, or concentrating on an equation, and that’s much more of a relief than it strictly should be. 

The first thing he does when your shirt falls open is to press one hand to your chest. It’s as if he couldn’t wait to touch you properly - the thought is flattering, at least. You think he might be trying to feel your heartbeat, which must be easy because your heart is racing, or maybe it’s just a very slow caress, which you hardly mind either, but no, he’s pushing down, directing you to lay flat on your back under him. 

You either love or hate the fact that he can do that so easily, direct you to move with the touch of one hand. You’re willing to like it for now, though, just for tonight, and there’s even a twitch below your waistband to confirm it.

It does make you shiver, and you perhaps hadn’t quite thought through the exact mechanics of how an exchange like this might go down between you and him, but his hands are sure as always and he’s looking at you like he’s starving for it, so you. Give in. Let yourself like it. 

Slowly, your shoulders relax, you exhale softly, and when his hands move to frame your waist you arch up into the touch. The way he can almost span your middle with both hands is nice, it’s hot, and once you get out of your own head you thoroughly enjoy the touch, want him to squeeze down so you can feel it. 

So you place your own hands atop his larger ones and press down a little, glancing up at him - “I won’t break, I promise, you don’t have to treat me too gentle.” 

It works. Even in the low light that leaks in from the hallway, you can see that his blue eyes are dilated near to black as he curls his fingers to fit tightly around the curve of your waist. When he squeezes down, thumbs stroking upward over your lower ribs, you let out a choked little sound that he obviously recognizes as pleasurable, judging by the gentle smile he responds with. 

“Okay,” he says, and you give him a shy little grin and duck your head. Your fingertips trace over his hands in a tiny circular caress. 

“I-- you--” he says, and then stops abruptly. You’re suddenly glad you’re not looking at him anymore, there’s a dangerous depth of emotion in just that single syllable alone, and you can’t deal with that right now. Instead, you wriggle purposefully in his hold, hips lifting off the mattress suggestively. Luckily, he understands what you’re getting at, he picks up on it almost intrinsically.

“It’s alright, I-” you murmur, as he pops the button on your pants and deftly undoes your fly, “you don’t have to, don’t, I understand.”

He lets out another breathless little laugh in response, and almost immediately he’s tucking his fingers into the waistband of your pants and tugging downward. Your underwear is caught in the motion, and you’re laid bare to him before you have time to work yourself up over the prospect of it. 

He’s.. he’s really clever when he wants to be, that’s no word of a lie. 

The rest of his clothes join yours on the floor soon enough, but try as you might you can’t bring yourself to actually, purposefully, look at his body below the waist. You’d just spook, you know that, and you’re nervous but you don’t want to stop. In your periphery, he looks, well, normal, and that’s reassuring enough for the time being. He climbs back over you, his knees bracketing your legs, and glances down between you thoughtfully.

There’s a pause, then, before he’s lifting one hand and tipping your chin back so that you have no choice but to look at his face as he adjusts his stance. He suddenly looks very serious, and you furrow your brow slightly to mirror him. 

He’s methodical about it, he uses his knee between your thighs to nudge them apart, and you let him, easily. As you look into his eyes, he looks into yours, and your legs part to accommodate his body. Your knees bend and are guided upward toward your chest until you feel him press his body right up against the backs of your thighs. Skin meets skin and you feel the hard line of his erection heated and obvious against the inside of your leg, and you gasp softly before you bite down on your bottom lip. 

Although the exchange is wordless, you understand perfectly - you know him, after all, and he knows you. He’s asserting the way he expects this to go, and you’re only too willing to oblige. 

When you make no move to argue, he lets go of your chin and tucks his fingers under your jaw instead, running his thumb over the curve of your cheek. His expression softens, and his gaze travels down, taking in the sight of your bare body, almost appraising. Your eyes stay on him above you. The hand at your waist slides down to hold your hip. 

“Can I?” He looks back up at you from under his glasses, his voice quiet but unwavering. He gives your hip a firm squeeze, which cues another warm rush of arousal. “I want to. I want it to be now, I want it to be me.”

And if that isn’t devastating, you’ve never felt devastation before in your life. You don’t know who else it would ever be, and if it will set him at ease you’ll say whatever he wants you to. Your lower body shifts, one thigh presses lightly against his side. He leans into the touch. 

Your voice is low, wavering, but you manage it, “yeah, go on. I’m- it’s yours.”

He hardly gives you a second to flush over your own words - he reaches down for the bottle of hand lotion between his bed and the desk, pumps a bit out into his hand, and then that hand moves down between your thighs and he pauses, waiting for your signal, so you give it to him. 

Before you can overthink it, you manage a minute nod, and not a moment later you feel him pressing against you, then slipping inside. It’s a stretch, this can’t possibly be how just one finger feels, and you gasp quietly at the feeling of it. It makes you squirm, but you can handle it. You’re proven right about the number of digits currently probing at the inside of your body when he separates the two, and you can’t help the bitten-off hiss you make at the slight sting that the motion brings. 

It’s not strictly painful, just a tight fit. He’s being gentle. Being careful. His hand makes a wet little sound between your legs as he curls his fingers, and you squeeze your eyes shut, mouth falling open. “Aah..”

The two digits inside of you straighten back out, and he adjusts the angle of his wrist and then curls them again, pressing gently up toward your stomach. He brushes up against the area you know about in theory, and you’re not sure what you expected but it wasn’t this, a slow and bone-deep roll of pleasure that easily counteracts the discomfort and makes your whole body shake. Your thighs part a little more as if by reflex, hips arching up into the touch, one hand moving to cover your mouth in an attempt to muffle the breathy, mangled sound he drags from you. You feel your erection twitch where it lies heavy and hot against your stomach. “Mmnah--” 

He’s breathing heavier, now, and the fact that you’re affecting him like this is a source of heady pleasure in itself. “Are you alright?” He murmurs, and you nod, your eyes still closed and your hand still clamped over your mouth. “Good.”

His fingers are relentless inside you, and even though he hasn’t rocked his hand in and out much at all, seeming to favor the deeper sort of wriggling motions he’d started with, you’re soon a breathless and sweaty mess beneath him. On a particularly firm press from the pads of his fingers, a spike of heat goes down your spine and you arch your back with a grunt, which is followed quickly by a high whine.

“Oh.. fuck.” Your voice is pitched up, and bless him, he stills for a second when the curse escapes you - he probably thought you didn’t know the word existed.

You crack your eyes open and peek up at him, biting absently at the knuckle of your first finger. His pupils are blown wide behind his glasses, his mouth just slightly open, and he wets his lips with a quick flick of his tongue. “Is that.. is that good?”

At your answering nod, he grins and flexes his fingers inside you again. It causes another flash of heat that makes your heart skip and your back curve, and you murmur another breathless curse. 

“If, mm, fuck- if you’re gonna do it, do it now,” you manage, breath hitching as your hips tremble under his touch - it’s all you can do not to buck up against his hand desperately. You’re suddenly very aware of just how close you are, it had snuck up on you, god, you could shoot off right now if he curled his fingers like that again-- “I can’t, I’m-”

He understands. His fingers withdraw from your body so quickly that it’s confusing, the odd empty feeling not quite computing in your mind, and you’re still slightly disoriented when he shifts over you and his bare chest settles against yours. It’s not his full weight, no, you’re not being crushed, it’s just the warm press of his skin on yours. His hands find your wrists, encircle both of them far too easily, but then he’s twining his fingers between yours and for some odd reason that’s the intimate gesture that makes your chest tighten uncomfortably. You can’t turn away, though, he’s too close to you for you to be able to hide now. 

His weight shifts to one arm, and when his other hand lets go of yours, for some odd reason you suddenly really, really want to reach up and touch his cheek. To brush the pad of your thumb lightly under his eye, trail your fingertips down over the strong line of his jaw. It’s stupid, and an inappropriately romantic thing to want to do. You don’t. You want to kiss him. You can’t. Your hand returns to your mouth, instead. 

He reaches down to take himself in hand and before you have any more time to process that this is going to happen, you’re stretching to accommodate him as he pushes his hips steadily forward. Even though he didn’t look to be any size outside of average, he feels huge inside of you, hard and unforgiving and hot. Despite your attempts at self-control, your free hand flies up to grab at his shoulder immediately, and the other squeezes his hand tightly where he’s using it to pin yours to the mattress. 

“Oh.. oh, oh, oh,” is all that’s able to come out of your mouth, the sound punched out of your chest in time with the little pulses of his hips that he works his way into you with. Your voice is small, and your cheeks burn because you’re cooing like a woman as he enters you like one, but also because it’s good - even the dull pain of the stretch feels so, incredibly good. “Oh, mmh.”

You’re squirming by the time he seats himself fully inside you, a tight coil of heat low in your stomach, eyes shut tightly and your breath coming in harsh pants. The tip of him brushes up against that spot that makes light burst behind your eyelids, and then he grinds forward and presses into it, and that’s all your body can take. 

You come, your release leaking from you in spurts where your erection lies untouched on your belly. “Aaah..” the sound you make is a weak wail, hips bucking upward against him as he holds mercifully still, “ah, St- oh, god-” you tug at his hold with your pinned hand, the other curling into a fist in the sheets. 

He lets out a staggered moan, then, leaning more heavily against your chest as both his hands move to clutch your hips. He only thrusts into you once, twice, slow rolls of his hips that barely have him drawing out an inch or two at most before he pushes firmly back in before he follows suit. There’s a faint burst of warmth somewhere in your pelvic region, and he groans huskily right into your ear, “Ffffuh- ugh, shit.” 

And then it’s quiet, and still. He’s panting heavily, his heart going much faster than yours, it feels like it could beat right out of his chest and into your own with the way he’s pressing you to the bed.

When you finally manage to open your eyes and look at him he’s braced on his forearms above you, still breathing heavily, usually tousled dark hair a genuine mess. There’s a passionate, dangerous emotion clear in his expression, one that has you averting your gaze immediately once you recognize it. 

He pulls out of you too quickly, discomfort twinging deep in your belly, and all but collapses to the side. You can’t help but grimace at the new feelings settling in now that the high is fading, soreness and wet where you really shouldn’t be, but you’re inexplicably sated and even something close to content despite it all. Your hands flutter down to rest lightly over your own hips, the skin there still faintly red from his tight grasp. He groans, softly, and reaches down to the floor for his pants. 

He dresses again with little fanfare, but as soon as his belt clicks back into place he sits heavily down at the foot of the bed and leans forward, burying his face in his hands. You pause to look up at him when he does, halfway through re-buttoning your own shirt.

His voice is muffled slightly, and he sounds more resigned than anything, “I have to go, down to the lab. I’ll probably sleep down there too, alright, don’t wait up.”

You nod, and he sighs, then, as if you had bitten out some scathing answer like the ones you do have half a mind to say out loud sometimes. 

“Look, it’s complicated, but it’s nothing you have to worry about. I’ll just try to get some work done, okay?”

“You know,” you speak up, voice low. “If you have some sort of a.. deal goin’ on here, no matter what you’ve done you’re still my friend.”

When he looks back up at you he looks, honest to God, horrified. “A deal? What do you mean? I haven’t-- no, haha.” He breaks off into a nervous little laugh, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

“I just mean,” You move closer to him, a hand reaching up to rest on his shoulder. “Look, my grandmother, she had some sorta hexin’, communin’ with a higher power thing goin’ on too. It’s not, you know, unheard of. In some places they call it ‘the gift,’ but.” You give a halfhearted little shrug. “Back home they didn’t call it anythin’ at all.” 

“I’m not a witch, Fiddleford.” He looks so tired suddenly, so forlorn, and all you want to do is wrap your arms around him and tuck him under the comforter with you. You can’t, though, you won’t. And anyway, he’s nothing if not stubborn.

So you nod again, a single downward tilt of your head. “‘Course not. Are you, uh, you headed on downstairs, then?”

He sighs, then nods in return, pulling his coat back on and wrapping it around himself tightly as he stands up from the bed, “yeah.”

“Yeah.” You echo, your voice so soft you can’t tell if he’d even heard you.

You watch him go, he leaves the door slightly ajar behind himself, and when you dream that night it’s of wandering hands and watchful eyes, a sense of deep, primordial dread stirring somewhere within the depths of your mind.


End file.
